Relics of the Community

Let’s talk about fan arrangement albums, and naturally the ones on OCReMix. I was thinking of listening to each and writing something of a review of them. Chronologially, starting from the first.

 

The first album on OCR is Relics of the Chozo (official site), a Super Metroid album. Protricity, the director of the project, has 9 remixes on the project, not counting collaborations. It’s safe to say it’s a Protricity album.

 

With varying styles, mostly orchestral vgm and atmospheric synth tracks, it’s an interesting album, fitting of the source.

The album is consisted of 19 tracks by, aside from Protricity, Adhesive_Boy, Avien, Children of the Monkey Machine, Daniel Baronowsky, Prophecy, Suzumebachi, Vigilante, and zyko.

 

It should be mentioned that the amount of protricitic tracks is IIRC due to the failure of other remixers to devote the necessary time and energy, or skill, to the project.

 

RotC is a good album with scary, alien music. While not all players can play .ogg files, which the project was released in, several of the tracks are available on OCR, and those should get you interested enough to find yourself an ogg player.

 

My lawyer didn’t, tho.

 

Fairness and Zykophants

Let’s say, for a split second of fantasy, that we live in a fair world. How would OCReMix look during that split second? Fair has never… Okay, I’m not gonna try to make that funny. My lawyer suggested lack of humor might help my case.

 

60,574 posts, 2,124 threads. I’m talking about the Reviews forum. I’m gonna make a quick scientific experiment. I observed that McVaffe had an unhealthy amount of reviews in comparison with other recent remixes. Further observations should confirm that many OCR forum members are sycos (not to be confused with zyko).

 

I’m gonna list 10 recent remixes and estimate their value based on a formula. The remixes are: Harmony of Destruction, H2O, Nuclear Flash, Kirby’s Mystical Track, Celestial Winds Blah Blah Blah, Heatman (Just a Fuse mix), Livin’ la vida Stockholm, A Day in the Life of a Judge, and Yet Even More Final Fantasy VII. And yes, I’m using nonary for this post.

 

For the sake of fairness, I’m not gonna include the two Final Fantasy tracks just outside the range I just set my mind on using in this statistical experiment. That means that both emo-FF and FFVI tie with Mega Man 2, each with 2 remixes.

 

On average, there are 2 reviews a day on new remixes. The actual number of reviews per day is much higher, due to OA, DA and others, but the older reviews don’t count here. It should be mentioned that at least OA is often seen on the first page of recent review threads.

 

The top scoring tracks here were not FFVII tracks, surprisingly. Less surprising was the sycophancy, most reviews were of McVaffe’s Okami remix and the Sixto Sounds/zircon Mega Man 2 collab. The top scoring tracks had more than twice the average.

 

More surprises await in the low range, with judge JJT and newcomer Kidd Cabbage. Both tracks were from Final Fantasy games, and received less than half of the average number of reviews. While surprising, it doesn’t really break convention.

 

I’ll sum this up by saying that some remixers have a significant status, and I’d like to attribute the unfair review balance to subliminal messaging but there’s a simpler explanation, namely that a significant portion of remix fans are sycophants, and I’m coming after you with Occam’s Razor if you disagree.